Microsoft: The Faint Smell of Rot

happycorp writes "A business reporter for ABC/Fortune is asking whether Microsoft is poised to collapse, based on years of industry observation (with successful calls in the past, he notes) rather than purely technical considerations. A short read, with this favorite quote: "if you sniff the air, you can just make out the first hints of rot.""

Comments

Sniffing the air:

[tod_miller]

"if you sniff the air, you can just make out the first hints of rot."

No that is just the huge sweat patches on monkey boys shirt.

stinky monkey:

"Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers *wheeze* developers developers!"

Get a dose of reality; Microsoft is gonna get bigr

[jipjakjam]

All those who think Microsoft is rotting, is starting to fade away,etc are badly mistaken. Infact it is about to get bigger and powerful when Longhorn comes out. XAML would replace HTML because it will be better. Longhorn is going to be pre-installed on every new computer that ships, whether you like it or not. Face it guys, why would anyone care a damn about Linux on the desktop when they have a '21st century' LOOKING desktop. Would you sacrifice your personal productivity for the CAUSE, to dent Microsoft ? You are using Windows now and you will be using Windows in the future. Linux might be very secure and Mac might look good, but that doesn't matter anymore. Java on the desktop is dead, .NET has supplanted it. Would you as a developer, sacrifice providing a better user experience for the CAUSE ? No, you won't, no one will. Face it guys, Longhorn is the next 'browser' (IE is dead) and we will be developing apps for it in the future and that will mean Mac and Linux will be dead on the desktop by 2010. Microsoft is about to own the internet as we know it. Hats off to whoever devised this brilliant ploy ! Only way this can be thwarted: -OEMs stop bundling Windows. Why will they ? They got families to feed. -Someone clones .NET and XAML engine. - ???

Surprising?

[Pan T. Hose]

See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.